The present invention relates to a cigarette maker.
The prior art embraces cigarette making machines comprising an infeed chamber from which shredded tobacco is taken up by a carding unit and directed into a descending channel.
At the bottom end of the descent channel, the tobacco is transferred by a toothed outfeed unit onto a feed conveyor and then carried by this same conveyor toward the bottom end of an ascending outfeed channel. The top end of the ascent channel is enclosed by a further conveyor consisting in an air-permeable, aspirating belt loop such as will attract the tobacco, rising through the ascent channel as a continuous flow of divided particles, and cause it to form gradually into a continuous stream of filler.
The stream of tobacco forming thus externally of the ascent channel is directed by the aspirating belt loop through a trimming station of which the function is to reduce the stream to a predetermined and uniform thickness.
The trimmed stream of tobacco is then released by the aspirating belt to the entry point of a station where it is formed into a continuous cigarette rod.
Generally speaking, the descent channel functions as a temporary storage facility or buffer, being occupied permanently by a column of tobacco, and is filled by a carding unit positioned to take up the shredded tobacco from a hopper.
Cigarette makers of the type thus outlined are fed not only with newly shredded tobacco, but also with reclaimed tobacco recovered from the trimming station and directed by a relative conveyor device back into the descent channel.
Having passed already through the carding unit, the ascent channel and the trimming station, then along the conveyor device, the reclaimed tobacco will naturally be dissimilar to the newly shredded tobacco in terms of both particle size and moisture content.
In addition, it is provenly difficult to achieve a uniform distribution of the reclaimed tobacco internally of the descent channel. Any such lack of uniform distribution brings notable drawbacks, in that it will result in an uneven composition of the tobacco filler along the continuous cigarette rod, and consequently in the single cigarettes cut from the continuous rod.
The object of the present invention is to provide a cigarette maker unaffected by the aforementioned drawbacks.